ABOUT RED EYE

Red Eye is a collectively organized, artist-led creative incubator for live performance. Known for engaging the full life cycle and constellation of artistic work, Red Eye lifts up inter/anti/transdisciplinary forms, works that resist categorization, art that understands itself as a part of a conversation, and creation that challenges dominant culture. The organization offers the resources of a small not-for-profit to walk with artists at many stages of their journey, incubating the radical voices of our fellow artists, in order to imagine how our shared futures might be otherwise.

Led by a collective of working artists, Red Eye values reciprocity, peer-to-peer relationships, and deep, transformative collaboration. These practices extend from the group of Co-Artistic Directors through to our relationships with artists, audiences, and community at many layers of proximity. Red Eye’s community is one that values complexity, exchange, and ongoing curiosity. We find possibility in the periphery and expansiveness through alterity. The organization advocates for equity and resilience, and is invested in walking the long road toward our liberation, particularly with the performance community in the Twin Cities. 

After losing our former space in 2019, Red Eye worked to reestablish our community's artistic home. Since 2022, we have stewarded a performance space located on unceded Dakota land in the Seward neighborhood of Minneapolis. This ~3000 sq ft flexible and accessible space is a home for contemporary performance in the Twin Cities—a place to deepen embodied practice, build networks of mutual support, exchange ideas, and contribute to transformative shifts in culture.

OVERVIEW OF WORKS-IN-PROGRESS

Works-in-Progress is a cohort-based container for creative process, peer exchange, and public sharing of a live performance work. Each year, Red Eye assembles a cohort of artists who wish to engage in dialogue around their creative process. These artists form a temporary community of practice, including varied backgrounds, aesthetics, and approaches to performance, but with a shared commitment to questioning artistic form and challenging dominant culture. This cohort is intentionally composed with an eye towards strengthening community relationships, bringing together artists with a balance of perspectives, and shared, parallel, or adjacent interests.

Process is non-linear and can take many shapes, and “work-in-progress” can mean different things. This program invites artists to both hold their process open and to experiment with public sharing. This could look like: a sketch towards a larger project, a format for sharing an ongoing practice, a compositional experiment, practical visioning work around particular a concept in your practice, workshopping a segment of a larger work, etc., but not a fully contained, completed, or produced piece.

Works-in-Progress participants receive modest technical, production, and marketing support, as well as access to rehearsal space at Red Eye as available. Cohort members meet periodically over the program period for feedback showings, where each artist shares material from their process and participates in a feedback protocol that has been developed over Red Eye’s history. The program involves critical reflection on making, as well as how we talk about making.

Each artist in the WIP cohort presents 10-15 minutes of work as part of a shared evening in the first weekend of Red Eye’s celebrated New Works 4 Weeks Festival. Works-in-Progress is linked to Red Eye’s Isolated Acts program, which supports six artists/collectives in creating half evenings of performance in the final three weeks of the festival. Works-in-Progress has been part of Red Eye’s programming since it began in 1983, and forms a recognizable feature of the Twin Cities performance landscape, with many alumni of the program serving as key makers in the community. 

PROGRAM DETAILS

Red Eye supports artists whose work is in critical conversation with conventional structures in the performance field, and practices that challenge dominant culture. Works-in-Progress seeks out applicants from a full range of aesthetics, cultures, and approaches that represent contemporary performance in the world today, and encourages proposals from artists of color, Indigenous artists, queer artists, artists with disabilities, and other groups that have been historically underrepresented in the performing arts. 

Artists working in all live performance disciplines are welcome to apply. Interdisciplinary, multimedia, and collaborative artists are encouraged. This year we are particularly encouraging collectives (whether established or newly formed) to apply. 

One application information session will be offered at the space, where artists interested in applying to the program can learn more in real time, ask questions, and get feedback on draft proposals. 

Works-in-Progress is open to both early career artists and artists at any stage of their careers who have reached an inflection point or could benefit from a focused development container with peer exchange. Projects in which the primary artists are current students are not eligible for this program. All lead artists must be based in/near the Twin Cities for the duration of the program period, and artists with an address outside of Minnesota are not eligible to apply. 

Four projects will be selected this year by the Red Eye Co-Artistic Directors. 

Participation is required in all group feedback sessions as listed above, plus attendance at at least two feedback sessions for Isolated Acts.

Works-in-Progress 2024 will be presented for three public performances Thursday-Saturday, May 22-24, 2025.  Performances will take place at Red Eye Theater, 2213 Snelling Ave, Minneapolis, MN 55404. These performances are not open to critical review. 

Each selected project will present A MINIMUM OF 10 AND A MAXIMUM OF 15 MINUTES, regardless of the duration or scope of the project. 

A direct stipend of $1000 is provided for each project to develop the work. 

The festival staff includes Red Eye Co-Artistic Directors Valerie Oliveiro and Emily Gastineau, a technical team, and (new this year) a cohort of associate producers. This year we are also piloting an embedded writer structure, including current OMNIVERS artist José A. Luis, who will follow his own writing process in relation to the festival.

Red Eye provides marketing for New Works 4 Weeks, though artists are encouraged to promote the festival to their audiences as well. 

Participants have access to Red Eye’s technical resources, including rehearsal space (as available) and limited lighting and sound capabilities throughout the rehearsal process. During the program period, certain weeks are reserved for festival artist rehearsals and showings, while other blocks of time are reserved for curated rentals and Red Eye performances.

Red Eye provides a technical team including basic sound and technical support, as well as simple lighting design for the public works-in-progress sharing. Participants are encouraged to consider how design elements may be incorporated into the development of the piece, but should keep technical requirements flexible and self-contained in the context of a shared evening. Participants are responsible for all elements of production, including casting, design (aside from lighting design), and direction.

SELECTION CRITERIA

Red Eye will select projects in which:

• The artist(s) are developing a distinctive voice or perspective, as part of a clear critical conversation with particular form(s), field(s), or current issue(s)

• The artist(s) come into the project with substantial concepts or questions, but show an openness to being shaped by the process

• Collaboration or public exchange is considered as a component of the work

• The artist(s) genuinely desire feedback on their work and full participation in the cohort process

• The program has the potential to make a strong impact on the artist(s) at this point in their artistic development

APPLICATION

CHECKLIST

1. Basic information: Your name, pronouns, project title (if applicable), email address, mailing address, phone number

2. Sharing your project, including: 

1) Which questions are you raising in your work and this project? (1-2 paragraphs) 

2) Describe the practical and/or conceptual parameters of your process and how these might manifest in  a work-in-progress performance. What do you envision the work to look, sound, or feel like? Do you imagine others (performers, designers, advisors, etc) being involved in the work? (1-3 paragraphs) 

3) Which form(s) or field(s) are you working within, or in conversation with? What is your relationship to your artistic lineage(s), as you define them? How are you in critical dialogue with those field(s), or how are you pushing on, speaking back to, or expanding those form(s)?  Note: Red Eye takes an expansive view of form; we want to know what it means to you. (1-2 paragraphs) 

4) What does collaboration or exchange look like in your practice? This might involve creative process, accessibility considerations, audience engagement, etc. (1-2 paragraphs)

5) Why are you motivated to participate in an intensive feedback process with a cohort? What do you hope to gain from ongoing exchange with peer artists? How do you incorporate feedback into your creative process? (1-2 paragraphs)

3. One-page resume or bio: Please submit either a resume OR bio of the primary artist submitting this proposal. If the primary artist is a collaboration, please include a resume OR bio for each member of the collaboration (max: 1 page per artist). 

4. List of proposed production/artistic personnel: Any lead artists, performers, directors, designers, etc. you are either planning or hope to involve in your project. You may also include a short statement detailing your relationship to any of these potential collaborators.

5. (optional) Production history of your proposed project, if you’ve had previous publicly shared iterations. For most applicants this is not applicable.

6. Work samples, including: titles, length of excerpts, your role in each, a brief description of how the work sample relates to your proposed project, and links to the work samples.

WORK SAMPLE(S)

For your work sample you can submit up to 5 “minutes” of material. Material will be weighted as follows:

> video sample, 1 minute = 1 minute         > audio sample, 1 minute = 1 minute

> visuals, 1 image = 30 seconds                  > performance text, 1 page = 1 minute

(For example: you could submit 5 minutes of video or 2 minutes of video, 2 pages of text, and 2 images, etc. The Google form includes spaces for up to 10 links.) 

Please include the link to your work sample on Vimeo, YouTube, Soundcloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, your artist website, etc. (i.e., no file uploads.) Include a password where applicable. Please double check the links and permissions of your digital files as the panel may not have the capacity to follow up with you if a link or password does not work.

SUBMISSION

Please apply through the Google form on or before Thursday, October 31, 2024 at 11:59 pm. To request application materials in an alternate format, please contact staff@redeyetheater.org.

ACCESSIBILITY

Red Eye is committed to cultivating and promoting an organizational culture of equity, accessibility, and inclusion. We will be happy to provide accommodations to ensure individuals with disabilities are able to be full participants in Works-in-Progress. To request accommodations for an info session, application materials in an alternate format, or a way to submit your application other than the Google form, please contact staff@redeyetheater.org or 612.870.7531.

CONTACT

Please contact staff@redeyetheater.org with any questions about the program or application process.